Chapter Six
The Avocado Kid
by
Samuel R. Burns
The only thing greener than this tenderfoot was the Avocado orchard that surrounded the tiny corral. He wasn’t tall but you sure thought he was. Surely never a cowboy there ever was that had this pair of legs, like two halves of a doughnut in blue. Of course, there was no horse and he wasn’t looking for a wrangler’s spot on a western movie set. This kid had just landed from a jacked up 4X4 pickup with Montana plates, and his boots crunched as he landed on the seashell drive. His was more a waddle than a strut as he approached me to “inquire within.”
“Howdy. Saw the sign. You the one I talk to?” I had to feel this guy out. This kid had on a straw hat, pearl snap shirt, and the shortest pair of Levi’s I ever laid eyes on. Add the boots outside the pants, and this cowboy is strutting on his knees. About half way across the lot, he chucked his chew and straightens up and we are eye to eye. I count nine, no maybe ten snaps down the front, his shirts have to be custom. He’s all trunk, and his arms tapped his knees.
His hair is red and cropped short. Everything about him is red; the freckles are many but they can’t hide his smile. That toothy grin was as big as the grill on his rig, and just as shiny. A few of the other residents came over when they heard the roar of the truck so close to their houses. He told us his name but said everybody just called him “Red,” so we forgot it immediately. We soon learn he is getting out of the Marines shortly and needed a place with room for a horse. Red looked around and decided this little green oasis was unlike any place he had ever seen. We decided to show him around the place.
The property has seven bungalows; six are supported by a main house that has cooking and bathing facilities. Avocado starts, plants, bushes, and every other phase of growth placed around and through the paths connecting, the bungalows are everywhere. It’s like an aviary without the net to keep the birds indoors. My place is self-contained and on the other side of the corral and partially hidden by avocado trees. The entire compound is nestled in the foothills of northeastern San Diego County surrounded with trees in excess of forty feet. The property is more than five acres so we had a good buffer of trees and land to any road. The place was quiet and secluded.
Red was looking to rent the open bungalow and wanted to know if for extra money he could board a horse. If one looked very hard and could imagine a shelter for a horse, the old lean-to might work, but it needed fixing up. He volunteered to do any work necessary to get the corral ready for an animal. He was in. When he moved in, although he didn’t look the look, he walked as if he knew horses so we weren’t concerned about the animal’s arrival. He worked for weeks readying the corral and cleaning his tack. Red’s folks had sent all his gear on a Greyhound. The mood was like Christmas that hot day in July as he opened the big box. When he got to the saddle, he gave it a big jerk forgetting how light it was, he went over backwards and landed on his funny bone; the beer flowed like eggnog that night.
Red, like everybody else got his mail thrown on the table in the main house. One just fished through it until he or she found something with their name on it. In the meantime, you know who gets what from whom. We noticed Red received a lot of mail from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The newspaper soon followed his arrival and we all thought that was real civil. The only rule was that Red had first crack at the paper, then everybody was welcome to read it. We were all sitting on the patio one Sunday, reading the funnies and barbequing some burgers when Red announced that on Labor Day weekend, he was bringing his horse home.
As the big day neared, we all got into the act. We painted the corral fence and a couple of the girls planted some carrots. We planned a party and I think everybody thought the rodeo was in town. In this part of the country, rodeos come to town. This is thoroughbred country, and Burns racing stables dot the open country. The Del Mar racecourse is only miles away and the Marines at Camp Pendleton put on the only rodeo for a hundred miles, again only miles away. It only happens one weekend a year, and not this weekend.
A couple of days before he was to leave to get the beast, he caught me at the mail table and asked to borrow two hundred dollars. He said all the corral work and buying the horse trailer put him a little short. He didn’t want to leave without a little cushion as he put it. I had been working a lot and did not help much so I chipped in. He said he was paid next week. Red left on Friday to much fanfare. The girls had put crepe paper on the trailer and bought a bale of hay from who knows where for the bed of the 4X4. We did not have a clue where the horse was or what type it was or anything. It was all a big secret and we bought it hook, line, and sinker. Red’s return and the subsequent party were set for Sunday afternoon about four. The parking lot was full of rigs when Red’s truck rumbled through the trees to the seashell drive and came to a halt. We walked up to the trailer and were confronted by a completely outraged, trapped animal confined to the trailer that showed the skin of the trailer dented everywhere from the inside out. The noises we heard did not register with the horses in the westerns we had seen. There was not a wrangler among us and Red was scratching his head. He said the nag had started bucking and shaking about fifty miles back and he barely kept the trailer upright. He was sure that getting him out of the trailer was the key to getting him to settle down. We agreed to help not knowing what that was, but there was safety in numbers?
It took our short-legged cowboy an hour to get a bridle over the nags’ ears and a bit in his mouth. Cooperation was not his middle name. In fact, I was sure he had no middle name. This animal was a four-legged curse in a can and Red was his can opener. To this day, I believe it was all an act. That devil backed down the ramp as if he knew it was his path to freedom. As soon as Red let all four feet hit the seashells, the nameless beast struck. The wild horses are sold as is; the shoeing of these nags was not the BLM’s priority so when the tender feet of that already wild buckaroo hit those sharp, jagged small shells the four-legged dervish was nothing short of unleashed chaos. There were two ropes on him and two people on each line, and we were just along for the ride. This yet unnamed devil went zigzagging and kicking through the parking lot and damaged every rig, he got near. The only redeeming quality of this nightmare was that he was kicking and rearing his way towards the open corral gate with us in tow hanging on for dear life. We thought later as we picked the bits and pieces of shell out of our shredded legs that we somehow mitigated the carnage. Everyone drank like heroes after the battle, but before the war was over. We assumed once in the corral the nameless devil would calm down. He did not. He went to the water trough and took a good drink then resumed his rampage. He started on his bedroom; two kicks and the back walls were kindling but couldn’t get out because the avocado trees kept him in. Did I mention he was black? He had a huge head and a long black mane that was a mess. No comb had feathered that majestic plume. Red said he was seventeen hands and he looked like he was ten feet tall. Those two measurements don’t add up but you get idea, this was a monster. As the afternoon wore on and we worked to keep ahead of the carnage, the beer began to take a toll. There was no way to deal with this brute. Everybody was screaming about insurance to get his or her rigs fixed and the damage was still happening in real time.
There is no polite word to name this maelstrom. The unnamed disaster has ruined our party, caused thousands of dollars in damage to cars and real estate and the beat goes on. The wind slowed for an hour so we breathed a sigh of relief. Someone suggested we feed him and the bale of hay was tossed over the fence, wire intact. He ate his fill, calmly sauntered over to the fence, and tore the top rail off in his mouth. He then reared back and stomped the lower two rails and was free in the now deserted parking lot. Red had positioned his 4X4 across the drive opening making the parking lot a bigger corral. The devil wind reared up and kicked the pickup a couple of times then started cantering around looking for a way out through the orchard. He was gone. If you have never been in an avocado orchard, there is virtu
ally no way to see anyone go any direction unless you are directly behind them in hot pursuit.
Red was frantic and we have ceased to care. Most of the corral was destroyed, the area around the parking lot was damaged to the point of despair and now the beast is loose on the countryside. Before Red can jump in his battered truck and look for the devil, we collar him. We want to know where “his” horse has been. He takes a deep breath and asks for a beer. He tells the whole story. He grew up on a ranch in Montana, and because his legs were so short, he never could ride very well. He couldn’t use his legs to grip the horse. When he joined the Marines, he told his friends that he was a cowboy, and even though he wore boots and shirts with pearl snaps and chewed tobacco, they all laughed because he didn’t look the part. He decided when he got out he would get a horse and show his buddies he was a cowboy. He didn’t have enough money to buy a horse broke to ride so he started looking for wild horse auctions that the BLM has from time to time to keep from having to put down so many of the ones they capture. The horses are $125 apiece and you haul them away, no exchanges. The BLM mailings were bulletins announcing auctions.
Red had the horse less than twenty-four hours, and a wild, unbroken horse was loose on the countryside, we had to call somebody. About that time, we heard a shot, then another. We ran out to the road and saw our bewildered beast frolicking down the road. I tell you this animal is human. He proceeded to turn down the lane and run back to the corral, as if he’d been coming there for years. It was the darndest thing any of us ever saw. It was time for a beer. It was near dark when we had “Mr. Wizard” corralled. Red said he thought of the cartoon character Mr. Wizard on the Tennessee Tuxedo show. Mr. Wizard received his knowledge from his “3 D BB,” a blackboard would appear and would impart some historic or scientific fact to aid the storyline. The information came quickly and Red thought the devilish beast was fast on his feet, all four of them, so Mr. Wizard.
The source and the location of the “shots fired” report the sheriffs filed never came to light. No one ever inquired about a horse on the loose so when Mr. Wizard gave us little trouble after the first afternoon, we welcomed him to the fold, sort of. We decided after many beers that our secluded location was Mr. Wizard’s best friend. When he’s in the corral, he is undetectable from the road. We are assured he will be well fed, and constant visitors to the compound hopefully will keep him occupied and quiet. Red has decided that when he loads the trailer for a trip, he will go under the cover of darkness to add to the mystery. After a time our biggest complaint, mainly from me, is the amount and delay of removal of the road apples.
Finally, the day arrives when Red approaches the corral with the tools of the trade. He’s jangling as his shiny spurs drag the ground and spin in the dawning light. His Stetson is cocked to one side, and his cheek is swollen with a new plug. He is sporting a lime green western shirt with enough pearl snaps to make a necklace. Unfortunately, not all those defining touches of the cowboy can get past the shortest, and bluest pair of Levi’s one ever saw. He walked by the fence, and the sun caught him flat going across the corral, and his silhouette was a perfect doughnut, a perfect dark orb, like an eclipse of the sun showing through his bow legged stumps on the soft loam of the corral. We all got our chairs and a beer to watch the show. Red had sunk a small telephone pole in the middle of corral, and we knew he was going to try saddling Mr. Wizard today.
I was on my second beer by the time our roping magician got a rope around Mr. Wizard’s neck. By the fourth beer, Red was still trying to get a loop around the pole when another problem confronts him. By now physics and geometry are at work and not in favor of Red, whom we’ve decided is “The Avocado Kid.” The Kid is short and with the green shirt and those blue duds, he had to have a nickname. The horse is tall. The pole is taller than both of them are. Red finally ropes “Wiz,” renamed due to the loss of all respect for the beast and “wizard” is too long--and gets a loop around the pole when he finds the rope is around the pole too high for him to use any leverage to get him close enough to saddle. He can’t let go, or all his work is gone, and in order to use the rope he needs slack to keep looping the rope around the pole to get close enough. It is now a force of wills and Wiz is doing some damage. We are howling. This is the best show since we rolled gas filled tires off the cliff overlooking the ocean and placed bets on fire hitting the water. Never mind the quarter mile of brush to the sea. Red is getting green, hot and tired. No one has offered our cowboy a beer and that corral was a dusty place. Wiz, we are noticing, is also tiring of this madness.
Red, the Avocado Kid, made his final move to put Mr. Wizard in his place. With a mighty blast of air out of his lungs, he jerked on that rope and made his move to get that loop over the pole. Red had figured the height of the pole didn’t matter, just that it stayed in the ground. Well when he couldn’t loop the rope over the too tall pole, he cursed all afternoon. Not one saw was available that day, no one could leave the show, and it was too good to miss. Remember that The Kid is no wizard with a lariat and when he lost his grip for a second Wiz bolted with Red in tow. They did one lap around the corral with us yelling for him to let go to no avail. Wiz went through the top two rails and The Kid hit the third. Wiz shot through the orchard, and Red lay in the dust, unmoving. As we get to him, he starts to stir and we slow down.
Our concern now shifts to falling down laughter as we get to him. He was leaning on what hit him and was scratching his head when the first beer went down. He looked around at everyone laughing today, but there were insurance claims and bills associated with this beast that he didn’t need. Everyone was laughing but him. Everybody said, “That beast is gone, forget it.” Therefore, he did.
The cowboy career of The Avocado Kid ended that day. I’m not sure it ever started. What did happen was a kid had a dream and he took it as far as he could take it. He learned something from Mr. Wizard in the process. He named the horse after a cartoon character who thought fast on his feet. One learns by trying, and Red learned he is not a cowboy. He was a Marine. Red learned to think that day.